Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

NOTE: THIS NEEDS COLOR (COLORED TEXT BOXES AROUND EVERY "AHA"), PHOTOS, INTERVIEW CLIPS, AND MORE GOOD QUOTES!

Summary

Note to documenters: In this summary, quickly tell the reader a, b, and c:

a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?)

b. Main communication improvement(s). (What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?)

c. Main communication realization. (What's your main realization about needed improvements to the communication infrastructure of public education? Who needs to communicate what information to whom, through which media, in order to support youth in a diverse community? Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome?)

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The Parent Connector Network was a key 2010-11 effort of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication. In this Working Group, we have been working to help ensure that all parents in a multilingual and class-diverse school can access important information about and from their school and share ideas with other parents. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving communication in their K-8 school and continuously pulled them into this Working Group.

In the past year, we have particularly worked to include immigrant parents in this loop of school info and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms, and a hotline to help get information to and from more recently immigrated parents who speak their language.

We now are working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month, to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on call for questions from these parents at any time.

The Connectors have also become key innovators of translation and interpretation infrastructure schoolwide. We spent late spring 2011 finishing a full list of components of such infrastructure!

UPLOAD THAT AS JPEG

We've had countless ahas about improving schoolwide communications, and particularly, about improving the infrastructure for interpretation and translation.

(COLORED TEXT BOX: Here's ONE MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network: improving translation and interpretation in a multilingual school and district in part requires getting more organized about effectively using a key local resource: bilingualism.

Communication we hoped to improve

Say more. What aspect of communication did we want to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?

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At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. In addition to barriers of language, disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- and gaps in personal relationship and connections -- keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, we reasoned, schools should ensure equal access to school information and dialogue, in order to promote inclusive participation in school life.

Because language barriers particularly exclude parents from full participation, the Parent Connector Network has focused on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole.

Begun in earnest in Winter 2011, the Parent Connector Network is a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors have come to also use Google forms/Google spreadsheets, and a multilingual hotline we made, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share a school.

We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school to respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a full list of such systemic supports. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

Process

How we realized and redirected things, over time.

Basic History

The groundwork needed to support the current work.

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As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools, and the full communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as full partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started creating the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in several other design efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections more broadly. Work to shape the Parent Connector Network actually began in Reading Night, our Parent Dialogues, and the Multilingual Coffee Hour, which we now lump together as initial innovation efforts of the Schoolwide Communication Working Group.

In 2009 when we began our work, the K-8 Healey had 4 historically separated programs: a magnet K-6 program drawing disproportionately middle-class families from Somerville; a "Neighborhood" K-6 program disproportionately enrolling low income and immigrant families living around the school, including from the housing development a few steps away; a Special Education program, also disproportionately enrolling low income students of color and immigrants; and a middle school (7-8).

With parents from across the first three programs in a Kindergarten hallway at the Healey, we began in fall 2009 creating Reading Nights to link parents in face to face efforts to share information on reading with young children. (PHOTOS) Several of these parents formed the early core of the parents who would continue to work on schoolwide communication for two straight years. We worked together on a multilingual coffee hour, and some parent dialogues. Finally, a subset of bilingual parents forged forward on the Parent Connector Network. From the beginning, we wrestled with the particular issue of connecting English-speaking parents and staff with speakers of other languages. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused full force on the Parent Connector Network in winter/spring 2011.

Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!

Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. To read the full accounting, see main article: Parent connector network/ahas

Findings/Endpoints

Please describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion!

Concrete communication improvements

What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?

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We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the unified Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, and we have two great leaders, one of whom, already a Creole-speaking staff member, we hope will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to handle the information translation process we’ve come up with.

INFRASTRUCTURE JPEG HERE.

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates and, we are honing a Googledoc for collecting schoolwide information for them to translate. We’re also teaming up with the PTA, who will begin to offer email training/listserv enrollment to parents to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

Main communication realizations and implementation realizations

What is your main realization about needed improvements to the communication infrastructure of public education? (Who needs to communicate what information to whom, through which media, in order to support youth in a diverse community? Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome?)

What is your main realization about implementing these innovations in education?

(ADDING QUESTION HERE FROM BELOW: What would you expand or do differently were you to do this again?)

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MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: All schools need systems for getting information to everyone; diverse schools particularly do. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families. Some are middle-class parents who email the principal and Superintendent constantly; some are left out of the most basic communications of schooling. Some parents have no computers and no internet. One parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. A listserv has long enrolled only some. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication problem.

Time is also key to school-home communication: some families have time to volunteer countless hours during the school day. In contrast, one Portuguese-speaking dad we knew of worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to pay someone to help him drive his daughter to school after he left for work. His "Connector" made the sign for him.

Communication from school to home is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology that isn’t so complicated it keeps parents out. It also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. The Connectors themselves are a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to monthly share information that requires additional explanation.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out other components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming. We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month; Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers; and some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs. We’re experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: A key issue we addressed was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. Some of this may be simply about organizing resources most effectively. Turlock Unified School District in California has a model where parents are trained and paid as professional interpreters and translators. Somerville’s Welcome Project already trains young people this way in their LIPS program, to translate at public events (http://www.welcomeproject.org/content/liaison-interpreters-program-somerville-lips). But adults are most comfortable with certain one on one communications from other adults. So, we’ve been exploring a combination of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and more streamlined staff efforts to then address individual parents’ needs.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and connectors to paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such 'case management.' So, how can districts create a hybrid of volunteer and paid roles? TBD next fall!

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

Technological how-tos

Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!

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As a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it, or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, we xxxxx. SETH ADD HERE!

Things we’d expand/do differently

OR, REPLACE WITH, ===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live”

If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!

-Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school. Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you make the translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts an efficient task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)